Christopher Davidson - After the Sheikhs - The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

Since their independence and the drafting of constitutions or, in Saudi Arabia’s case, the promulgation of its Basic Law, there have been legal articles and clauses in the Gulf monarchies which have required government personnel, businesses, and even individual residents to boycott all connections with Israel. In the UAE’s case for example there has always been an Israel Boycott Office squirreled away somewhere in the federal government, and since 1971 federal law number 15 has stipulated that ‘…any natural or legal person shall be prohibited from directly or indirectly concluding an agreement with organisations or persons either resident in Israel, connected therewith by virtue of their nationality or working on its behalf’. [732] 75. See Hall, Marjorie J., Business Laws of the United Arab Emirates (London: Jacobs, 1987). For many years, however, the boycott office’s work has extended far beyond a straightforward embargo on trade between UAE-based companies and Israel. Notably, telephone calls to Israel have been barred, websites with an Israeli suffix have been blocked by the state-owned telecommunications company, [733] 76. The suffix:.IL. and Israeli nationals have not been permitted to enter the UAE, nor — in theory — have any visitors been allowed to enter the UAE that possessed Israeli visa stamps in their passports. [734] 77. In practice it is possible to enter the UAE with Israeli passport stamps, but no effort has been made to clarify the situation.

Up until 2003 Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up was frequently publishing anti-Semitic material and hosting internationally condemned anti-Semitic speakers. [735] 78. Davidson (2008). pp. 199–200. Until its closure in 2003 the ZCCF hosted a number of anti-Semitic speakers including members of the International Progress Organisation. According to the US Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the UAE authorities also reportedly fail to prevent anti-Semitic cartoons from being published in the two bestselling state-backed Arabic newspapers— Al-Ittihad and Al-Bayan . [736] 79. US Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2007 report on the United Arab Emirates. The cartoons often depict Israeli leaders being compared to Hitler, and Jews being portrayed as demons. In January 2009, at the height of the Gaza conflict, the UAE’s bestselling English language newspaper, Gulf News , not only featured such a cartoon (featuring an Israeli soldier with a forked red tongue), [737] 80. Gulf News , 11 January 2009. Article entitled ‘Israel’s War of Deceit, Lies, and Propaganda’. but also published a Holocaust revisionist piece which claimed ‘…it is evident that the Holocaust was a conspiracy hatched by the Zionists and the Nazis, and many innocent people gave their lives as a result of this inhuman plot… the Holocaust was a major crime in history and the Israeli culprit is at it again today’. [738] 81. Gulf News , 4 January 2009. Article entitled ‘Zionists are the New Nazis’.

After joining the World Trade Organisation in 1996, the UAE authorities were clearly under pressure to drop or at least relax their boycott of Israel. When Dubai agreed to host the 2003 annual general meeting of the WTO, delegations from all member states had to be invited, and there was no way to prevent the arrival of an Israeli delegation and the flying of an Israeli flag on top of the Dubai World Trade Centre tower. [739] 82. Davidson (2008), p. 200. The UAE’s newfound leadership role in renewable energies has had similar results: after winning the bid to host the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency, in early 2010 the Abu Dhabi immigration services had little choice but to allow an Israeli delegation — including a minister — to arrive in the emirate for IRENA meetings. Explaining that ‘…although Israel and the UAE have no diplomatic ties’ an IRENA spokesperson confirmed that ‘Israel was accommodated in accordance with specific UAE agreements’. [740] 83. Reuters, 18 January 2010. In addition to international organisations, there has also been increasing pressure directly from the US, with the US Department of Commerce’s Office of Anti-boycott Compliance dutifully recording all examples of the UAE’s boycott requests. These are normally clauses inserted into contracts issued by UAE companies, most often with the following wording: ‘the seller shall not supply goods or materials which have been manufactured or processed in Israel nor shall the services of any Israeli organisation be used in handling or transporting the goods or materials’. [741] 84. Davidson, Christopher M., Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond (London: Hurst, 2009), chapter 6. [742] 85. New York Review of Books , 19 August 2010. [743] 86. Associated Press , 25 October 2006. [744] 87. Wall Street Journal , 18 February 2009. [745] 88. The Hamdan bin Muhammed bin Rashid Sports Complex. [746] 89. Arutz Sheva , 15 December 2010.

Meanwhile, it was reported in late 2009 by the Toronto-Harvard OpenNet Initiative that — as something of an exception to the country’s massive increase in internet censorship — the UAE had quietly unblocked internet access to web sites based in Israel with the ‘.IL’ suffix. All such sites were suddenly found to be ‘consistently accessible via the country’s two ISPs’ and it was stated that ‘…it is not clear why the UAE authorities have decided to remove the ban on.IL Web sites and whether this unblocking will continue’. [747] 90. OpenNet Initiative press release, 20 November 2009. Even more curiously, in late 2010 it was reported by a Kuwaiti newspaper that a female member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family had been flown to Israel to undergo ‘complex heart surgery’. The entry procedures were reportedly facilitated by a member of the Knesset, after the sheikha’s doctor had recommended a specific hospital in Haifa. Interestingly, the sheikha’s picture was featured in a report on Israel’s Channel Two which emphasised the way in which ‘medicine does not differentiate between patients and should be a means of rapprochement between the peoples of the region’. [748] 91. Al-Watan , 22 November 2010. And in February 2011 Amnesty International highlighted the disappearance of a UAE national teacher who had previously been detained in late 2008 for ‘demonstrating in solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip, then under Israeli military attack’. [749] 92. Amnesty International press release, 11 February 2011. In years past it is likely that a Gulf national taking such a stance would have had the tacit approval of the authorities, rather than face any difficulties.

In some ways Bahrain has gone even further than the UAE in improving its relations with Israel, at least on an official level. For the past few years government personnel have been instructed not to refer to Israel as the ‘Zionist Entity’ or ‘The Enemy’ and in 2005 the kingdom closed down its equivalent boycott office. [750] 93. Gulf News , 2 November 2007. Moreover, according to leaked US diplomatic cables from the same year, the king confided to US diplomats that ‘He [the king] already has contacts with Israel at the intelligence/security level (i.e. with Mossad) and indicated that Bahrain will be willing to move forward in other areas’. When pressed on trade ties with Israel, however, the king did admit that it was ‘too early, and that the matter would have to wait until after a Palestinian state’. [751] 94. Haaretz , 8 April 2011. Indeed there are signs in Bahrain, as with the other Gulf monarchies, that revelations of any formal ties with Israel would be met with strong condemnation from the national population. In summer 2010, for example, large demonstrations were staged in Bahrain’s principal mosques — both Sunni and Shia — to denounce the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Flotilla. Worryingly for a king nurturing security and trade links with Israel, the crowd’s main slogan described the US president as being a liar for ‘not exposing Israel as being a terrorist state’. [752] 95. Al-Hayat , 5 June 2011.